Page 111 of The Fall

I lean in closer, wanting to kiss him. His breath mingles with mine, warm and real and here. I can almost believe we’re invincible.

But the room tilts on its axis, sliding into a slow, sickening spin.

My stomach drops; the floor seems to ripple beneath my feet, and sounds warp and distort.

Blair’s face blurs in front of me, his features swimming as I try to focus.

The air is too thick to breathe. It feels like being submerged, the world’s sounds and colors turned up until they bleed into one another.

I grip his shoulders harder, trying to steady myself against this sudden vertigo, and my eyes land on my broken stick mounted on the wall. The shaft is split at a violent angle, graphite peeled back like a scream.

“Torey?” Blair’s voice sounds underwater.

The locker room walls seem to pulse, contract, expand. That stick is a warning, a message from myself I didn’t understand.

“Hey.” Blair’s hands slide up my arms and squeeze my shoulders. “You okay?”

A nod is all I can manage. The edges of my vision swim, black-then-light, black-then-light.

Remember.

“Listen up, degenerates!” Hayes vaults onto a bench, a towel slung low on his hips and his phone held aloft like a trophy.

“I just got off the phone with my magnificent wife and she’s got our celebration spot locked down.

It’s time to trade in this Gatorade for margaritas, boys!

The Seawall is waiting for us, and the rooftop deck is all ours! ”

My mind is a siren, wailing a warning. I am standing on a cliff’s edge and watching the rock crumble away while the whole world cheers for the view.

“Wives, girlfriends, boyfriends,” Hayes’s voice barrels on, winking at Blair and me. “All welcome. I got us a limo, so let’s fucking go!” His eyes are so bright, his voice so full of a life he doesn’t know he’s about to lose. “We’re celebrating tonight!”

The word— limo —hits me, and suddenly I’m drowning in memory: black water, twisted metal, free fall?—

My knees threaten to buckle. The fluorescent lights blur into halos, and for a second I’m not in this locker room at all; I’m falling, I’m trapped in a car filling with water, a man is screaming as wide as the night?—

“Torey?” Blair’s voice cuts through the chaos in my head.

The locker room snaps back into focus. My mouth is dry as sand. Every cell in my body screams one word: No.

“No.” The word is quiet, almost lost in the noise.

Hayes cups his hand to his ear. “What, Kicks? Can’t hear you over the sound of victory.”

I pull myself from Blair’s arms and cross the room. It feels like I’m wading through deep water. “No limo. Cancel the car.”

A beat of confused silence hangs between Hayes and me. “Buddy, what are you talking about?” He laughs, a note of uncertainty in it.

“We’ll take your Escalade.” I want to break down and scream, or hurl his phone into the walls, or, worst of all, to tell them the truth, but if I did, they would think my concussions were talking, or that I was cracking.

They would handle me with care and get me to the medical unit, and then they’d climb into the limo without me, and?—

No, we have to do this together, and I have to be the sanest man in this room. “I’ll drive,” I say.

Blair stays close enough that the heat off his body skims my side. His palm spreads between my shoulder blades. “Torey?”

I cannot look at Blair; I will shatter if I look at him. “I don’t want to take a limo. I want to drive us.”

Hayes blinks. “Kicks, we’re celebrating.”

“I’ll drive. I’m not drinking.”

“Are you sure?” I can feel the question in Blair’s gaze, feel him trying to read the unreadable thing that has taken root inside me.

The locker room is quieter now; the guys are all watching.

I meet Blair’s gaze. I would rewrite the stars for you. I would tear the universe apart to keep you safe. “I’m sure.”

Time is a river that only flows one direction, but I am the stone in the waters. I will break the waves before they crash against Blair’s beach. I will bend this tide to my will. This is the line I’ve crossed a thousand times or none at all. Does the loop begin or end here? “Give me the keys.”

The room warps, two versions of the same moment trying to exist in the same space: one where I let the limo take them, one where I put my hands on the wheel and cut a new line through the night. For a breath, I’m weightless between them.

Hayes’s thumbs hover over his phone. He looks from me to Blair then back again. “Alright,” he says, that one word heavier than it should be. “Escalade it is.”

I nod once. My tongue tastes like metal. “Thanks.”

He tosses me his keys; I catch them one-handed.

“Kicks is on DD duty!” He turns to the room and raises his voice. “Nobody give him shit, he earned it.” That gets a laugh, and the crackle in the air eases. “We roll in twenty.”

I turn and meet Blair’s gaze. His eyes are deep water under storm light, searching me. I take his hand and pull him close. “I love you,” I whisper.

Here, finally, the path branches.

Here, I save him.

We troop out to the garage, and the team’s laughter rolls over concrete. Their jackets are thrown over their shoulders, faces red from victory and glory. Hayes folds me up against him with an arm around my shoulders. “You lose a bet with yourself or what?”

He sees my face and thinks again about keeping up with his bullshit. Let them all think whatever they need to think, as long as they get in this fucking SUV and not that limo.

And there it is, Hayes’s Escalade, black and patient under the lot lights.

I unlock the doors with a chirp; doors thump open. Hawks whistles, twirling an imaginary lasso as he leaps up onto the running board. “Take us away, Kicks!”

The team piles in, a tangle of elbows and chirps and laughter.

I take the driver’s seat, set the belt across my chest, and for the first time since Hayes said the word limo, the ground under me steadies.

Blair slides into the passenger seat with the easy athletic certainty of a man who belongs wherever he lands.

His hand drops to the console and finds mine, palm-to-palm, fingers lacing.

He’s always been able to read the fault lines inside me. “Let’s go,” he says.

The engine turns over smoothly, and our headlights wash the night. My hands grip the wheel, knuckles white before we’ve even left the garage.

Their futures stretch before us, mine to protect.

We ease out into the night, a car full of hockey players moving away from the bright blaze of the arena. The city streams past in ribbons of neon and shadow, filling up with fans in Mutineers jerseys celebrating our playoff berth. My reflection merges with Blair’s in the windshield.

I run every possible route in my head, reading the grid of the city the way I read angles on a power play. The path we took last time was straight downtown and then left, crossing the bridge as the bay held its secrets underneath.

I turn right, slide my thumb across the wheel. One, two, three conscious choices, every detail a coin flipping through the jaws of fate.

Hayes plays DJ. Hollow sings along. Hawks starts telling a story about a playoff celebration in major-junior, something about a mechanical bull and too much tequila.

Red lights stack up. At each one, I tense, bottling the urge to punch the gas and sprint off into the dark. Don’t look crazy; don’t let anyone take the wheel from you. I want to turn into the night and drive until the road ends, run us all to the edge of the country. Would that work?

“Okay, seriously.” Hayes leans forward between the seats. “Did you get replaced by someone’s grandmother? What’s with the driving?”

“Shut up.” I bat him back and accelerate up to the speed limit.

Ahead is a tangle of orange cones, construction crews getting started with the night’s work. Fuck.

The universe has walls and I feel them closing in.

I search the side streets, hunting for an escape, a route that keeps us from the bridge.

Instead, I hit a one-way street, a dead end, another one-way.

This night is relentless, correcting every change I make.

I am funneled onto a path, and every way forward filters us toward the bridge.

This cannot be the only way. Let there be a breach; give me one, damn it. I would crash this Escalade myself to save Blair and the rest of them. I would cut my own life in half. All that matters is getting to tomorrow.

But there is only forward.

So I take it. If the universe wants to herd me, fine; I’ll set the pace. I line us up with the on-ramp that spits us out toward the span and ease us into the climb, eyes flicking from asphalt to mirrors to the slice of horizon ahead, refusing to blink long enough for fate to slip a hand in.

The bay waits, flat and unreadable. Hayes keeps humming off-key. Hawks taps his knee like he’s timing a shift change.

My pulse syncs to the seams in the road.

I pull us into the middle of the lane, dead-center like a defenseman sitting in the slot, stick out, angles right.

I picture the far shore, the line of lights, the dry land where the night will break.

I picture Blair’s hand in mine, the locker room tomorrow, us going to the playoffs.

I grind those images into anchors and lash myself to them, and then I drive.

What do I owe fate? Only this: to hold the line, to keep my promise, to steal one second more.

The bridge climbs in a clean curve, a vertebra of concrete and cable lifting us over water gone black, the surface broken by knife-bright slashes from the city. Tampa Bay sprawls beneath us. Boat lights scatter across it, little fallen fires that refuse to sink.

I know this view, the pattern of shadow and gleam, the way the reflections beat in time with the lane markers. This is the edge of the map. I’ve been here in shattered glass, upside down with blood in my mouth. I’ve been here rushing toward the dark.